DCU researchers working on €4.6m EU cloud project for next-gen IoT

DCU has been awarded €4.6m from the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme to develop new cloud computing systems capable of supporting an advanced IoT future.

Dublin City University (DCU) researchers have been allotted €4.6m in EU Horizon 2020 funding to develop the Recap project, along with Intel in Ireland and seven other agencies in Spain, Sweden and the UK.

The aim of Recap is to develop the next generation of cloud, edge and fog computing, but with a heavy slant towards the future of internet of things (IoT), where estimates of the number of sensors by the end of the decade range up to multiple billions.

Recap wants to find answers to improve the capabilities and capacity of future networks, through targeted research advances in cloud infrastructure optimisation, simulation and automation.

In particular, efforts will be made by the Irish and international researchers to overcome the latency and delays arising from the growing usage between the end user and data centres.

Recap will also incorporate a much more elastic model, which delivers services and allocates resources while being tied to time-varying user requirements.

At forefront of IoT research

Theo Lynn, principal investigator for Recap at the Irish Centre for Cloud Computing and Commerce at DCU, said: “Ireland plays an important role in the provisioning of cloud services through the various multinationals that host in – or base their data centres in – Ireland.

“As our conceptualisation of the cloud and the benefits that the ‘internet of everything’ will bring evolves, new technologies are needed to support the quality of service that enterprises and consumers expect.

“Recap is at the forefront of research in this area and will make a valuable contribution to the next generation of the cloud.”

The project will run until January 2020, with the project coordinators aiming to solve known constraints and offer genuine commercial benefits to the consortium partners and other European adopters within Recap.

Last week (10 March), it was revealed that five Irish SMEs were awarded a total of €10m in EU Horizon 2020 funding, including Axonista, AltraTech, Slainte Beoga Teor, Luxcel Biosciences and DP DesignPro.